Sony Freeview problem, temporary fix offered

If you are the owner of a Sony DVD recorder you may have been experiencing some issues in the last few days regarding the equipments Freeview TV channels, and the problem has been pretty widespread with a temporary fix being offered.

Over the weekend lots of owners of various Sony DVD recorders noticed that some Freeview channels were missing, with many complaining that a software fault had caused the equipment to stop recording or even receiving certain channels.

Lots of owners contacted Sony about the issue to initially get no response and the company’s own support forums were filled with unhappy customers complaining about the problem. It seems the problem has been hitting thousands of users with many wasting time trying to retune the equipment with no joy.

Then on Saturday a Sony support agent revealed a team were looking into the issue while many wondered if a firmware update had cause the problem to begin, but Sony later revealed it was caused by “something [that] has changed in the way that these devices are receiving EPG [electronic programme guides] data from Arqiva”.

Sony said yesterday that it was working with the communications infrastructure company along with broadcasters to fix the issue, but in the meantime users are advised to take out any disks before pressing the stop button on the device, and while holding it down press and release the power button and release the stop button.

This will reset the equipment and will delete any corrupt data and when retuning the device owners need to choose the digital guide instead of guide plus.